e is for excellent, said the time traveler to her fellow
by Jedi Buttercup
Summary: At the moment, it was Schrödinger's question; Sam didn't have to face the answer if she didn't know it.


**Title:** e is for excellent (said the time traveler to her fellow)

 **Author:** Jedi Buttercup

 **Rating:** Gen; K+

 **Disclaimer:** The words are mine; the worlds are not.

 **Summary:** _At the moment, it was Schrödinger's question; Sam didn't have to face the answer if she didn't know it._ 1000 words.

 **Spoilers:** Stargate SG-1 2.21 "1969" and 2.22 "Out of Mind".

 **Notes:** For SG-1 Time Travel Soup, originally posted elsewhere 3/3/2015. Not a crossover, but contains a few references to a certain movie featuring time travel released in 1989. :)

* * *

Sam regarded the baked confection on her plate with a slight frown, then lowered her fork, rolling the bite she'd taken around in her mouth.

"No," she shook her head, carefully analyzing the flavor profile. "You're right, it's not the same. I don't know if it's the crust, or if there's some ingredient missing, or what, but it's just not the same pie."

"Given that it was _1969_ , maybe we're better off not knowing what that ingredient _was_ ," the colonel replied with a wry twist to his mouth. He was already more than halfway through his own piece of pecan pie, imperfect or not; he gestured at her with another forkful. "Especially considering our hosts were on their way to _Woodstock_."

"Now, be fair, sir," Sam replied wryly, "Michael and Jenny were very helpful. We'd never have made it to New York and D.C. in time without their assistance."

"Particularly after they found out we were 'aliens'," Jack commented, making air quotes around the last word. "I guess, just so long as we were still enemies of 'the establishment'..." He paused there, mouth pursed, as though he wanted to add to that observation but had decided not to.

Sam sighed and looked down. She'd been wondering, too; and she'd seen at the time how hard it had been for him _not_ to weigh in on the decision facing their hosts. Had Michael run to Canada after all? Or had Jenny tearfully sent him off to Vietnam? Had he ever returned, either way? At the moment, it was Schrödinger's question; she didn't have to face the answer if she didn't know it.

On the one hand, while she'd only spent a week with the friendly pair, it was by their help as much as Hammond's that they'd made it back from 1969 without having to live the intervening years over again. But on the other, since renewing the friendship was out of the question regardless given how many classified secrets their mere presence would reveal, was there really any point in finding out?

"Have you looked them up?" she voiced the thought, toying with her fork. "I'd thought about it, but..."

"Ah, not yet. Though I'm sure the general has. Had a few... more important things on my mind."

Right. Things like, how different would her life have been if she'd left a time-delayed letter for her father to on no account miss picking his wife up at the airport one particular day when she was twelve? But when even the slightest change might remove her presence from the team, and perhaps derail the Stargate project altogether... still, it had been a heavy temptation. One she undoubtedly hadn't been alone in. Between that and Hathor's little deception on their next offworld mission...

Sam frowned at the thought of the false SGC, and put her fork down altogether. "Yeah. Such as, how could I not have realized what Trofsky- or whatever his actual name was- was up to from the start? Blaming the drugs only goes so far. I mean, we _just_ saw Cassie in the future, and she told us that Daniel, at least, lives long enough to go bald. Never mind the fact that the only advanced technology in Hathor's SGC was supposedly from the Tok'ra; nothing like Cassie's Stargate-controlling device at all."

"Huh." Jack sat slightly back in his chair, staring at her. "You know, I never thought about that. I just knew that something about their behavior really didn't sit well with me. Isolation tactics: not even any _thing_ familiar besides the setting, never mind any _one_. And all the _questions_ , when I supposedly wasn't even healthy enough to roam the base on my own yet. Not treatment I would have expected to face at the SGC, unless there'd been a serious change of administration, in which case I figured myself for a prisoner anyway."

That surprised Sam; she'd assumed since he was the first one to break free, that he must have been the first to realize the truth. But... he had, actually; it was just a different truth than the one she'd been thinking about.

"Anecdotal fallacy," she concluded aloud, shaking her head ruefully. "Traveling through time was still a recent and very significant experience for me, on a professional as well as a personal level; I suppose it just seemed natural to accept that I actually had done so again, more or less, and ignore any details that contradicted that story."

The corner of the colonel's mouth quirked in return. "Whereas my significant experiences..."

He let that thought trail off too, but the point was made. He'd had a long and storied career before ever joining the SGC, after all.

Deliberately, Sam picked up her fork again and took another bite. "Well, I feel a little better about things now... except where this pie is concerned. I think I _am_ going to have to look Michael and Jenny up, if only to get their recipe."

"And if the worst case scenario turns out to be true?" Jack mused, subdued humor glinting in his eyes as he polished off his own piece. "If, say, he _did_ join up, stayed in the service... and ended up in the SGC commissary?"

Sam considered her reply to that a moment, then brightened as the perfect quote occurred to her. "I would say... that you and I have witnessed many things, but nothing as bogus as that would be."

Jack's eyebrows flew up, and he stifled a laugh. "Good one, Carter. You know, I actually wouldn't be surprised if we stumbled across a phone booth with an antenna on top one of these days? After everything else we've seen, I wouldn't put it past one of the advanced races we keep running across to... appreciate that particular design aesthetic."

"A most excellent theory," she agreed, lightly.

"To more excellent journeys, then," Jack snorted, lifting his coffee cup.

"To excellent journeys." Sam clicked her cup against his with a renewed smile.

-x-


End file.
